As a 12-week consultation period begins on the new Welsh government obesity strategy, Lowri Jackson, RCP head of policy and campaigns (Wales), discusses the key aims of the plan and the complex challenge of preventing and reducing obesity in Wales.

Other conditions with a lifestyle component, such as lung cancer, are recognised as a disease, so why not obesity? Doing so would focus attention on improving prevention and treatment, rather than telling those with obesity to ‘try harder’, says Professor John Wilding.